At about the 3rd decade of my life, I developed a curiosity and love for photography. And about the same, for travel. The two together? Like peanut butter and chocolate. Unfortunately my journey didn’t just skip along with gorgeous photos of exotic trips around the world. Au contraire. My photos for a while (quite a while if you really want to know) kind of sucked. Now not ALL of them sucked, or I likely wouldn’t have kept going. But a MUCH higher proportion than there should have been. And in this blog post, I’m going to tell you why.

The reason I am telling you that my photos weren’t so spectacular is so 1) you don’t feel bad when you make not-so-wonderful photos - we all do, 2) so you can learn from my mistakes, and 3) so you can see that ANYONE can learn the strategies I teach you. I wasn’t born understanding how to make gorgeous travel photos.

Let’s dive in. The main reason why my photos were not so lovely, was that I shot in aperture priority mode. “Wait, but you TOLD us to try that mode and that it’s your favorite!” All of that is true. BUT when you shoot in aperture priority mode it’s important to be aware of your other settings like shutter speed. And I was completely, utterly oblivious to it.

I LOVE markets (as you know if you know me at all) but NONE of these market photos turned out. I was SO disappointed! For this one, I used f/14 and shutter speed 1/8. What was I thinking…

Another failed market shot. I mean what IS that stuff! Settings: aperture f/10, shutter speed 1/3 second (insert eyeroll emoji here)

I would just get out my camera and decide “ooh I want the entire scene in focus so I’ll pick f/22!” OK, well that can be good, but remember f/22 means there’s a teeny tiny hole in your lens letting an itsy bitsy amount of light in. So what does your camera do? Slooooows down the shutter speed to compensate. So by slowing down the shutter speed your camera is saying “there’s some extra light, we sure needed that!” What that means is that suddenly my shutter speeds were in the 1/30, 1/20 or even ½ second range. So? Well, let’s talk about that a bit.

If my shutter speed is at ½ of a second, that means I have to hold my camera REALLY steady in order for my photo to be in focus. If I don’t? Then while the shutter is open for that half-second, my camera is going to shake because I just can’t hold it steady enough. And then? Blurry photo. Yep. My photos were out of focus. A lot of them. I kept thinking “why the heck aren’t my photos in focus? Is there something wrong with my camera?” HA! No there was something wrong with the operator.

This one was close…but still not sharp. I shot it at f/22 with a 1/40 second shutter speed.

But it took me awhile to really nail down why it was happening. OK, so this is where it gets a little embarrassing. Because any photographer worth her weight could tell you that if your photos are out of focus, your shutter speed might be too slow. So the fact that it took me multiple trips and years to figure that out is hard to admit out loud. And this is pretty darn out loud, I mean it’s online for Pete’s sake!

Once I did get that aha moment and figure it out, then I really had my work cut out for me! Because I didn’t shoot in manual mode. So if I’m in aperture priority mode, my shutter speed is too slow...uh then what?

The first bit of knowledge I figured out, was to be a little more flexible in my aperture settings. So I WANT f/20, but if f/8 gets me the shutter speed I need...I can make that work. Now what IS that Goldilocks shutter speed? It depends. Oh I know you love it when I say that! Well it depends on how steady you can hold your camera. So how strong your arms are, how heavy your camera/lens combo is, what position you’re in when making your photo… I read articles saying anything slower than 1/60 of a second and you can get camera shake. So for a while that was my guideline. But guess what? I have the upper arm strength equivalent to a newborn kitten, and at the time a pretty heavy camera setup. So 1/60 second would still give me blurred photos. So do some experimenting. Now I like to see at least 1/80 or faster.

SO much potential with this one! I mean that subject, the composition…but I shot at f/16 with a 1/25 second shutter speed. I’m thinking another trip to Japan is in order for a redo…right?

The next bit of knowledge I gained, and it really was like finding a buried treasure...was ISO. For the sake of too many words, I’m not going to go into all the gory details about ISO. Suffice to say it’s the sensitivity to light of your camera sensor (and even that definition has a whole lot of debate swirling around on the internet). What is MEANS is that by changing the ISO number, it makes your photos brighter or darker.

Normally when outside in a bright situation you shoot ISO around 100. I tend to leave my ISO at automatic and recommend you do the same. Your camera is pretty darn smart about it. UNTIL the light starts to sneak away. Then your camera might adjust by lowering your shutter speed too slow for you to hold your camera steady. Why? It’s smart, but not a genius.

So as that light starts to go down in the evening, or when you go inside that’s when you take over the ISO from your camera for a bit. Because as the light starts to go down, then you adjust your ISO up. How high? Yeah, you know...it depends. Inside you’ll want 6400 or so. I say or so because if it’s REALLY dark, or nighttime and you don’t want to pull out your tripod, it might mean 10,000 or as high as your camera can go. Just know that the higher your ISO goes, the more noise or grain you’ll see in your photos. I don’t see noise as a bad thing personally. Those same photographers who obsess over the specs of every new camera and lens, and over the perfectly sharp focus of every single photo? Noise in a photo probably makes them a little crazy.

I think noise can even add to the artistic effect of a photo, so I’m okay with it. You have to decide if it’s worth it to you. I personally would rather have noise (which can be drastically edited out very easily in lots of apps) than carry a tripod around with me everywhere I go. You be the judge.

Pretty darn close, but still a little out of focus. But I like it enough that I didn’t toss it. Settings: f/8, 1/40 second shutter speed.

Well there you go. I shared my deepest photo secret. I sucked for a while. Now I don’t want to hear any excuses from you about how you don’t know what you’re doing or you don’t know how to use your camera. None of us did when we first started! All I’m asking is that you learn from my mistakes and figure this one thing out BEFORE your next fabulous trip!

The Main Reason Why My Photos Sucked

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